Life after Traumatic Brain Injury

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Tag Archives: Depersonalization

I’m writing today about my injury and the impact it has on my life….. again.

You see with something like this happening it becomes all you know.

I left hospital with an extra item, one I didn’t even notice for a while. It became part of me very quickly and I still have it to this day. It’s invisible to everyone else but I know it’s there underneath my clothes.

Despite its voluminous size and eye watering pattern it’s hard to see at first, it was sneakily put on underneath my clothes on top of the bra of hope when I left hospital. It’s deceptive and seductive. The folds of its material and the warmth it gives make you keep it on for a while but that’s when it has got you.

The Mumu of Injury you see is a parasitic polyester freeloader, it hangs around and makes you think that it’s all you need. You begin to believe it’s all you can talk and think about. It encourages you to symptom check and read endless books about your condition. It starts to become one with you and define who you are. I have become very ‘inward’, I constantly navel gaze and forget to look outwards. This results in dissociation or depersonalisation. Anxiety sufferers will know this sensation well. I am becoming ‘cut off’ from the world. This is where the Mumu is clever, you start doing its work for it.

My Mumu is still here, it’s getting tatty and smelly and uncomfortable but it doesn’t want to go, it invades my head at night whilst I’m trying to sleep, it stops me paying my full attention to things I’m doing, it pokes at my brain when I try to have conversations.

My Mumu knows its time is nearly up though, I’ve got wise to its ways, I’m starting to switch my brain away from its ridiculous ideas and hopeless dialogue so it tries a little harder to cling. I see it though now, I see its garish colours and I now realise that instead of doing it to myself that all I need to do is stop listening to it. I don’t want to help it anymore. I am starting some phased exposure and pushing myself outside even when the Mumu is choking me and weighing me down. I’m not listening to it when it whispers in my ear that my tiny wee head ‘zap’ is something very serious. It’s hard to go against what the Mumu is telling me, it’s scary, it makes me shake and want to run away but I need to release the bra of hope, I don’t want this trauma to define who I am anymore.

We all have our own Mumu’s, they come in many guises. Anxiety, depression, illness, tell me about yours and how you are defeating it. I hope you all get to release your bras of hope someday too.